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Via SchiffGold.com,

The CME Comex is the Exchange where futures are traded for gold, silver, and other commodities. The CME also allows futures buyers to turn their contracts into physical metal through delivery. You can find more detail on the CME here (e.g., vault types, major/minor months, delivery explanation, historical data, etc.).

The data below looks at contract delivery where the ownership of physical metal changes hands within CME vaults. It also shows data that details the movement of metal in and out of CME vaults. It is very possible that if there is a run on the dollar, and a flight into gold, this is the data that will show early warning signs.

Gold

The Comex has seen unprecedented delivery volume in gold since the election as highlighted in previous articles. This has been driven by an arbitrage between the spot and futures market. This can be seen in the chart below. It has normalized some, but is still showing erratic behavior.

Figure: 1 Spot vs Futures

The chart below shows the total delivery volume for major months in gold. As can be seen, April had the second highest delivery volume on record, clocking in at 64,514 contracts delivered, equivalent to $21.3B!

Figure: 2 Recent like-month delivery volume

There was something particularly wild about April. The chart below shows a few metrics:

• The contracts outstanding the day before delivery starts (blue)

• The contracts on delivery day (green)

• • This is usually a big step down from the day before as contracts roll

  • This number is the sum of contracts open + delivered on day 1 to show what the outstanding amount was on day 1 of delivery

• Net new contracts opened during the month for immediate delivery (red)

• Delivered contracts (orange)

As highlighted above, you typically see a big drop in contracts from the day before to the day of, presented by the blue and green bars respectively. This month the opposite happened! On the final day, someone took on a huge position. The next day, they then settled these without delivery. This is represented by the negative red bar as the contracts were cash settled rather than delivered.

Figure: 3 24-month delivery and first notice

This activity can also be seen below. A huge number of contracts came into the first delivery day but then cash settled.

Why? What happened? Is it possible someone was smelling blood in the water and wanted to test the Comex? Did someone get incentivized to cash settle since there might not have been enough physical gold to satisfy demand? If so, I bet they got paid a big premium to do cash settle.

Unfortunately, the data can only tell us so much. We can conclude that something happened behind the scenes in a way that has never happened before. The pressure continues to build!

Figure: 4 Cumulative Net New Contracts

Even with the large cash settlement, we then saw over 10k contracts open for immediate delivery (upward slop the in the red line above). This would have ranked second all-time behind only the large amount from February ~17k contracts.

Switching to physical inventories….

Inventory levels have actually dropped since the beginning of April. This could be tied to the event from above. Maybe someone was promised some gold and some cash for cash settling. That suspected investor(s) apparently pulled the physical right out of the vault.

Figure: 5 Inventory Data

Once gold and silver were announced to be excluded from tariffs, people started suggesting that the arbitrage would collapse and movement of gold from London to the US would be halted. While inventory levels have stabilized and even dropped some, demand for futures and physical delivery is not slowing. First, as shown above, April was a huge month. As we approach May, we are seeing an increase of demand into the delivery period. See chart below.

Figure: 6 Open Interest Countdown

With the massive surge in inventory the open interest relative to physical stocks is not as massive as the raw number.

Figure: 7 Open Interest Countdown Percent

Silver

Silver is a minor month in April. While delivery volume was elevated (second only to February), it was a big step down from where it was in April.

Figure: 8 Recent like-month delivery volume

A similar situation took hold in silver with the large cash settlement (albeit on a smaller scale).

Figure: 9 Cumulative Net New Contracts

Silver inventories have continued to increase unlike gold which has leveled off.

Figure: 10 Inventory Data

Registered silver is also seeing a massive increase.

Figure: 11 Inventory Data

As we approach April, the silver contract is right in line with recent trends.

Figure: 12 Open Interest Countdown

On a relative basis, open interest is actually quite low because of how much the Comex has restocked silver inventories.

Figure: 13 Open Interest Countdown Percent

Conclusion

The data continues to show that there is a lot of movement going on behind the scenes in the gold market. The price of gold has reflected this, hitting new all-time highs multiple times in April before seeing some profit taking.

This is not your ordinary gold market. The market is under pressure and there are a lot of people fighting over limited supply of physical gold. The tariff exclusion did not seem to slow the demand of physical.

It may take several more months for all this to play out, but one thing is for sure… the fireworks are not slowing. The Comex data is sending up loud signals. Physical gold is in demand. Do you have enough?

About a month after Elon Musk's xAI Holdings acquired the X platform in an all-stock deal valuing the social media company at $33 billion, whispers have emerged that xAI is in talks with investors to raise $20 billion — a move that could push the startup's valuation north of $120 billion. 

Citing anonymous sources, Bloomberg News reported Friday that xAI is in talks with investors to raise $20 billion. According to PitchBook data, the deal would mark the second-largest startup funding round on record, behind only OpenAI's $40 billion raise earlier this year. The funding would push xAI's valuation north of $120 billion if successful. 

Last week, sources told CNBC's David Faber that Musk was seeking to place a "proper value" on xAI.

Here's more color on Faber's conversation with sources:

The comments came during a call with xAI investors last week, sources familiar with the matter told Faber. While the Tesla CEO didn't explicitly address an upcoming funding round, the sources interpreted the comments as a sign that xAI is getting set up for a significant capital raise in the near future.

. . .

The sources also said the company discussed revenue at a potential run rate of $1 billion or more on the call.

Back to the Bloomberg report, Musk and xAI executives have been probing investors about their appetite for a $20 billion funding round. One source said the funding round could be much higher. 

The latest Bloomberg data shows Musk's net worth at around $335 billion. Year-to-date, his net worth has declined by about $100 billion, with Tesla's market capitalization halving due to gloomy sales figures and Democrats' war on the company.

Late last year, Musk's rocket company, SpaceX, became the most valuable startup after a private transaction valued the company at $350 billion. 

Musk's companies include many of the technologies that will dominate 2030 and may even determine the fate of the US empire as the great power fight with China rages on. 

Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Catherine Austin Fitts (CAF), publisher of “The Solari Report,” is back to update us about the “Fast-Approaching Digital Control Grid.”  (CAF) told us last time here on USAW, “There is no bigger ongoing battle for lovers of freedom than the battle taking place over the freedom killing idea of digital ID.”  

But it’s more that just ID, it’s an entire control grid that is being quietly built that is like a frog being put into pot and the water being brought to a boil.  

CAF explains, “You know our goal at Solari is each person has a free and inspired life.  So, we have been working for several years to stop financial transaction control."

"  If you get the ability to track each person and control their transactions, so if they don’t do what you say, they can turn off your money.  That is game over for the Constitution and for human liberty.  If you look at how the control grid is coming together, there are many different pieces.  There is digital ID, all digital currency or transaction system to a social credit system to the management to certain kinds of data and back-up energy.  There are many different pieces.  We look at the pieces, and we look at them as one-off things such as, oh, I don’t mind having a ‘Real ID’ because I can see why they might want a federal ID, or a passport or whatever.  Each one of these things looks nonthreatening and even convenient, but when they snap together, they are in a control grid, and it’s completely something else.  When Trump was elected, I was shocked to see, almost immediately, the President announce the Stargate AI initiative with the mRNA vaccines, which to me is the internet of bodies.”

CAF put together a long list of Trump Administration actions that are speeding up what looks like a control grid.  It’s called “The Fast-Approaching Digital Control Grid.”  It lists things such as crypto friendly currency actions, private Central Bank Digital Currency, shrinking banking sector, DOGE, undisclosed Epstein files and many more red flag items that could be used to allow crime to continue and build a digital prison for “We the People.”  While the Trump Administration brings change at a record pace, not a single thing has been done to find out about the “$21 Trillion Missing Money” that has been well documented by CAF and Michigan State Professor Dr. Mark Skidmore.  The money has been stolen from America, and the silence about this is deafening.  CAF says,

“We know there has been tremendous fraud in the financials of the US government.  We know that has happened.  If you look at all the things that you or I would do to figure out what had happened, where the money went and how do we get it back, that’s not what they are doing. . . . If you look at how we would do a successful operation to reengineer government and identify the real fraud and stop it, I don’t see any indication that they are doing that.  I do see some selected efforts that are probably sincere. . . . They are shutting things down lots of us would like to see shut down. . . . We know how to stop the death and disabilities that come from the Covid 19 vax injection, but you go the CDC website, and they are still recommending the Covid injections.”

The massive crime going on with government accounting makes it necessary for the control grid.  CAF explains, “What happened in the last Trump Administration is they adopted FASAB 56.  FASAB 56 basically said they could take the books of the US government dark."

"A secret group of people, by a secret process, could remove operations from the financial statement, and they don’t have to tell people what they removed.  

So, we have no idea what is in the financials. . . . This includes the big banks and contractors who do business with the government.  

So, looking at the US stock market and bond market, I have no idea what is true or not. . . . We are flying blind.”

CAF still likes gold for an investment.  She is also very bullish on silver as it takes about 100 ounces of silver to buy a single ounce of gold.  The gold/silver ratio is at record spreads.  CAF says, “At some point, the gold/silver ratio will revert to something more sensible.”

In closing, CAF says, “Everyone tell your Senator and Congressman and President Trump on X or Truth Social stop the control grid.  Stop with the control grid, and we can do this. . . . If we can face it, God can fix it all.”

There is much more in the 44-minute interview.

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with the Publisher of The Solari Report, Catherine Austin Fitts, as she looks ahead for what’s coming in 2025 for 4.26.25.

*  *  *

To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

There is a lot of free information on Solari.com.

Authored by Anders Corr via The Epoch Times,

On April 14, a local government administrator in the United States sent my relative a letter that she suspected of including artificial intelligence (AI) content. Sure enough, an AI detector found 83 percent generated by AI GPT.

She said it was the best letter she had ever received from a politician—and she writes to her representatives frequently. She praised the letter for responding to every single point she raised in her own letter, something no unaided politician had ever done.

We toyed with the idea of confronting the administrator publicly. If AI wrote a better letter than the administrator himself, perhaps he could be replaced with the technology, and his salary redeployed for more substantive taxpayer benefits. It was a tongue-in-cheek idea. But the logic is nevertheless disturbing.

If artificial intelligence is now better than one politician for one task, according to one constituent, is it plausible that in 10 or 20 years, AI could be better than all politicians for all their tasks, according to most constituents?

At that point, voters might just vote for an AI politician rather than a human one. Human politicians are, after all, time-constrained by their need to sleep, eat, and hobnob with their elite donors and other benefactors.

My relative decided not to confront the politician at his next public meeting. She wants to influence his decisions in the future, and public shaming is probably not the best way to do this. So he gets a pass to continue using AI on unsuspecting constituents. Even his tiny hold on power at the local level protected him from the truth.

If he can get away with it, perhaps many other politicians are doing the same. This empowers AI-using politicians at the expense of the old-fashioned types who simply do not have enough time to respond to every point of every letter of every constituent, but try anyway. AI politicians then gain an advantage in the next election, and over time, due to natural selection, all politicians will use AI, as those who don’t get voted out.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), a small autocratic country in the Middle East, is already way “ahead” of this slow “democratic” transition to AI. In a world first, the UAE is using AI to both track the effects of existing legislation and write drafts of new legislation. Presumably, the president of the UAE will review the legislation prior to enacting it. Let’s hope so, as there would then be at least one human in the loop.

The UAE considers using AI to write legislation to be 70 percent more efficient than relying on human legislators to write laws. How that remarkably round number was arrived at is unclear. But as UAE citizens cannot vote, they could essentially become forced laborers working not only for the president of the UAE but also for AI, given that nobody understands exactly how AI comes up with its recommendations.

Now, consider expanding this to everything. A new startup in Silicon Valley, called Mechanize, audaciously wants to use AI to automate all jobs. The startup, launched on April 17, expects to start replacing white-collar jobs, such as those of accountants, lawyers, and authors (full disclosure: this author is an author, so may be biased in favor of humans).

But the company also envisions pairing AI with robots to mechanize other jobs, for example, in agriculture, construction, and manufacturing. Companies like Waymo, Zoox, Tesla, and Lyft are already well on their way to populating our streets with robotaxis that could eventually lead most of us to dump our cars, perhaps in compliance with a government fiat written by AI.

That the military could also be automated, despite the promises of AI companies to do no such thing, is obvious given the rise of armed drones on the battlefields of Ukraine, and the interest of the U.S. and Chinese militaries in matching AI with drone warfare. One reason the United States denies the fastest AI semiconductors to China is that they are needed for the small AI devices onboard military drones that must learn from the adversary’s strategies mid-flight. The drone that learns the fastest and adapts its tactics to enemy drones before returning to base will survive.

The Israel Defense Forces reportedly used AI to target as many as 37,000 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) suspects with a 90 percent accuracy rate. This was paired with some “acceptable” level of civilian casualties per target to arrive at those approved for aerial bombing, with not-too-accurate dumb bombs. AI saved a lot of time for the targeters, though.

Communists have long promoted the idea of full mechanization to “free” humans of the need to labor. In their “utopian” schemes, full mechanization would allow humans the free time to pursue whatever they want, including leisure, art, and family. With the rise of mechanization, automation, robots, and AI, a new utopianism is coming that will appeal to the “Silicon Valley proletariat” of coders, programmers, and other tech workers.

With AI, this coming “tech vanguard” can seek an AI communism, in which humans frolic in nature while being watched over by the machine. It sounds dystopian and easily manipulable by Leninists if not Stalinists. But its rosy-glassed adherents will see it the other way around. They have likely read Richard Brautigan’s 1967 poem envisioning a “cybernetic ecology”:

where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace.

Brautigan was not specifically communist, though he was counter-culture.

In the mid-2000s, a British movement developed a concept similar to being “watched over by machines of loving grace” that would become known as “fully automated luxury communism.” It was described by The Guardian in 2015 as “an opportunity to realise a post-work society, where machines do the heavy lifting and employment as we know it is a thing of the past.” This was before AI became popular. With AI, even the white collar workers will be “free.”

AI is being touted, by even those who know its dangers more than others, as a carrot and stick, a necessary evil, like nuclear weapons, in the competition with China. This could be considered an “anti-communist” or “anti-authoritarian” use of AI. The idea is that, if the United States does not deploy the most sophisticated AI to both entice Beijing to reform, and deter Beijing from attack, market democracy could be at a disadvantage.

In any conflict that occurs, Beijing will certainly deploy all technologies at its disposal. This puts those who would prefer to go slowly and carefully, or avoid any future of AI, in a bind. Use AI fire to fight fire, or not? And what if the fire blows back on the freedom of the individual in a market democracy, after burning the authoritarian adversary?

Handing over so much power, up to and including “AI communism,” whether in the form of political power to legislate or industrial power that replaces trillions of dollars worth of human labor, is an immense concentration of power in the hands of whoever controls AI. That could be a dictator, an oligarchy, an elected official who accrues too much power, or a hacker. It could even be AI itself, if it goes rogue or is irretrievably granted that power at some point in the future.

The advent of AI is likely a disaster for human agency, especially if it later develops malign rather than benign attitudes toward humanity. A benign AI is in no way guaranteed if we relinquish power to an immensely powerful technology that even its creators do not fully understand, and are not confident they can control.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Russian as well as independent regional media sources have revealed that a high-ranking CIA official's son was killed while fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine last year. 

The news and story of the young man's death is highly unusual, given his mother is a US intelligence information warfare and 'disinfo' expert: the CIA’s Deputy Director for Digital Innovation Juliane Gallina Gloss.

Michael Gloss in Moscow’s Red Square before he reportedly joined the Russian army, via IStories

The New York Post among other US media outlets described the CIA official's son, a longtime global traveler and activist, as having been 'radicalized' against the US and its foreign policy.

Michael Alexander Gloss, 21, died on April 4, 2024 - based on a family obituary posted by a funeral home in Fairfax, Virginia - but on Friday investigative outlet IStories reported that Russian authorities only informed his family of his death in October. His official obituary only related that he was "tragically killed in Eastern Europe."

IStories apparently had access to his phone records, given that it published a live recording of Gloss informing his parents that he traveled to Russia, along with many photos including showing life in a Russian barracks with fellow soldier friends who appear to be foreign fighters.

Juliane Gallina Gloss has been the CIA's deputy director for digital innovation since being appointed in February 2024, and is a career CIA and US Naval intelligence officer.

It is reported that the son of CIA deputy director Julianne Gallina Gloss, 21-year-old Michael Gloss died in Ukraine as a Russian soldier. He signed a contract with Russia’s MoD. His father, Iraq vet Larry Gloss, develops secure software for U.S. and NATO forces pic.twitter.com/HmMyAnym5N

Among the more interesting parts of the story is how the young man wanted to "defeat the military-industrial complex":

In the same message, Michael vaguely described his future in which he would “defeat mortality and the military-industrial complex:” “I find myself more and more alive by the minute. Hungry for blood and glory. And basking in the pleasure of knowing that it all is still to be done... But as of now. I might have just incarnated in time to defeat mortality AND the military industrial complex.”

When asked exactly how he plans to defeat the military-industrial complex, Michael replied: “If I told you my real plan you wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

The Amsterdam-based Moscow Times writes that "Gloss was one of more than 1,500 foreign nationals from 48 countries listed in the leaked recruitment database since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022."

The highly detailed IStories Russian investigative report begins below...

Via CIA/US gov website: Juliane Gallina Gloss was named the CIA’s deputy director for digital innovation in February 2024.

In a video, a thin young man with long hair tied in a messy bun carefully releases three tiny chicks from a box onto the grass. A tattoo of a peace sign — the emblem of the anti-war movement — is visible on his finger.

“We found some baby chicken in the [Turkish] local market and Itthobaal had the idea to get a few of them and maybe he will travel with them. He bought maybe three or four chickens and put them in a nice little box with straw and everything he could find. But the next one of the chickens died and the second one too. He was quite sad about it and felt very stupid that he had this dream of a whole journey together with this little new family.”

A year later, Itthobaal — one of the many names that 21-year-old American Michael Gloss used to introduce himself — signed a contract with the Russian Defense Ministry and died in Ukraine. IStories has reconstructed his final route.

This is the story about how a young anti-fascist, environmental activist and women’s rights advocate from the family of a CIA deputy director dreamed of traveling light around the world, but ended up in the Russian army.

Michael Gloss is one of more than 1,500 foreigners who passed through the Russian military recruitment center during the war in Ukraine, whose identities were established by IStories.

IStories: Gloss put a photo taken at the regiment’s base on his avatar in his Odnoklassniki profile. Photo: Odnoklassniki

Read the full detailed report here.